


It'll Be Okay

by whitherwaywill



Series: one chapter wonders [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drunk Draco Malfoy, Except for the epilogue, F/M, Gen, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Harry Potter In Love, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, a little bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23499952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitherwaywill/pseuds/whitherwaywill
Summary: Harry and Hermione are best friends, have been since they first met on the train ride to Hogwarts. But when Ron abandons them, they start doubting themselves, and leaning even more on each other. When Ron's pretty sure he's in love with Hermione, Ginny still likes Harry, and Voldemort hanging over them like a shadow, will the pair ever really be okay?
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter
Series: one chapter wonders [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1689838
Comments: 2
Kudos: 90





	It'll Be Okay

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hermione comes back from her jaunt through the woods, dark eyes standing out against a figure that, too late, Harry realises is becoming gaunt as they camp.

“He’s gone,” she says hollowly. “He’s gone.”

Tears well up in her eyes, and she wraps her arms around herself, holding herself together.

Harry walks to her. She stands there, eyes squinted shut, holding back the tears he knows are there. He holds his arms out, then puts them down, more than a few times. Finally, he opens his arms, and steps forward, enveloping her in them.

“It’ll be okay,” he whispers into her hair. “We’ll be okay.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

When they stand over his parents’ graves, she is the one who holds him as he trembles, holding it all in.

“It’ll be okay,” she says. “We’ll visit again.”

He tells her those same words when he wakes up after meeting Bathilda Bagshot, when she collapses onto him, holding him in a stranglehold. When, crying, she tells him she was afraid he wouldn’t make it.

She shows him the two halves of his wand with downcast eyes and a tear streaked face.

“I’m sorry, Harry,” she whispers. “It was an accident.”

“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“What do I do, Harry?” she whispers, hugging herself outside the tent, pacing. “He came back. What do we do now?”

“We look for Horcruxes,” Harry says. “We kill the Bogeyman. Easy peasy.”

She giggles a bit. He sighs. “Come here,” he says, pulling her into his arms, a move that has become so much easier since that first time when Ron had left.

“We’ll be okay,” he says, rubbing her back as she snuggles into his shoulder. “It’ll all be okay, in the end.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hermione screams as Bellatrix cackles, swiping her wand through the air. She screams, trying to expel the pain through her mouth, as if screaming could make it better.

In the back of her mind, the part that is thinking through the pain, she’s worried. Worried for Harry, worried for Ron, worried that one of them will do something stupid trying to save her.

Worried that Harry will do something stupid trying to save her, even though Ron’s voice is the one she hears bellowing her name over and over and over again.

And when they finally come, finally come and save her from the awful agony, they shatter a chandelier, and apparate away with a dying elf.

She knew they would do something stupid.

Ron visits her in her sick room every afternoon, sits by her bedside and reads to her from one of the books he finds in Bill and Fleur’s bookcase.

He accidentally chooses a romance book, and his ears are red as a fire engine when he realises his mistake. Hermione laughs, and tells him he might want to put that one back.

Harry visits every morning, and talks to her. Talks to her about his fears, his hopes…his life, his feelings.

She listens. It’s like one huge, real book that she decides she loves to read, or listen to. She learns all the sordid details of his relationship with Ginny, which aren’t a lot, really. She learns his fear that she and Ron will die because of him, that everyone he loves will die because of him.

He breaks down crying the first time he sees the scar Bellatrix left.

But it was okay. It hurt, yes, but it was okay, because they are all alive, and they’re going to finish what they started.

It will be okay, she tells him. It will be okay.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

She clings to the dragon, her hands slipping on the scales. Behind her, she hears the boys cheering, laughing. When she dares to peek, Harry is smiling at her.

“Remember Buckbeak?” he grins.

“Don’t remind me,” she groans, closing her eyes again. “Let me know when it’s safe to get off.”

He pats her shoulder, laughing. “It’ll be okay.”

She smiles and shakes her head.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

When Ginny shows up in the Room of Requirement, Hermione can feel her spine stiffen. Which is completely unnecessary. Ginny isn’t the enemy. Ginny is one of her friends, one of her only close friends who is a girl.

But in those few seconds before he looks away, when she smiles alluringly at Harry…Hermione feels her spine stiffen, her mouth tighten, and her hand inches towards her wand.

Hermione wonders why she doesn’t feel the same about Luna, when the blond girl grabs Harry’s hand and they leave the Room of Requirement, heading towards Ravenclaw’s common room.

She rubs her hands up and down her arms as Harry walks out the door. “Be safe,” she whispers, so quiet that no one hears her.

 _It’ll be okay_ , she can almost hear his voice say. _It’ll be okay._

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Not long after he leaves, Ron nudges her.

“The bathroom,” he says. She looks at him in confusion. “Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom,” he says more urgently. “The basilisk fangs!”

“Oh!” she gasps. They don’t even have to say anything to each other before they both start pushing their way to the exit. When they’re out, they pull their wands out, and start running.

When they get there, Ron stops in front of a sink with a snake engraved in it, staring at it.

“Well?” she asks impatiently. “Now what?”

“Harry spoke Parseltongue to it,” Ron says uncertainly.

“We’re not going to be able to get down there, then, Ron!” Hermione says irritably.

“No, wait,” he says, before garbling something unintelligible to the engraving. The sink slowly opens up to reveal a hole. He looks at her, grinning, and she is duly impressed.

“Well done,” she says in surprise. He smiles, ducking his head, then jumps down the hole.

She shakes her head, smiling, before following him.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hermione kisses Ron. Even as she flings herself at him, she knows it’s wrong, all wrong, as she sees Harry’s shocked face out of the corner of his eye.

It was the house elves, she guesses. No one else had thought of them.

But she isn’t sure if the kiss of gratitude is worth seeing Harry’s face, looking like the bottom of his world had fallen out.

And it’s her fault he looks like that.

So she can’t tell him it’ll be okay.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It’s her turn for the bottom to fall out of her world when she sees Harry’s body, dumped in front of Voldemort like yesterday’s garbage.

She thought that a death would make her shut down, make her stop circuiting.

Instead, Hermione is enraged. She hates, for the first time in the war. She hates this monster who has taken Harry, her best friend, her everything, away from him.

And she starts screaming, along with the rest of the fighters gathered on the steps.

And when Neville Longbottom chops the snake, Nagini, into two parts, she pulls out her wand, and she fights like the lion she is.

She can’t say anything will be okay. Not with Harry dead, with Voldemort that much closer to winning.

And when Harry pulls the invisibility cloak off of his head, casting a protego to protect Mrs. Weasley…

Hermione is so relieved, she could sing, even though they’re in the middle of a battle, even though they’re still not out of the woods yet.

That’s when she realises: she’s in love with Harry Potter.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

They see each other after the battle.

“Are you okay?” she asks, searching his eyes, inspecting his body for outward wounds.

“I’m alive,” he says, giving her a half-smile. “That’s something, isn’t it?”

His eyes are a little empty. He looks lost.

Hermione reaches for him, pulling him to her. “It’ll be okay,” she says. “We’ll be okay.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

All three of them go different ways after the war. Well, Hermione goes a different way from the other two. Harry and Ron move into Grimmauld Place, and start Auror training, getting their NEWTs through the Ministry. Ginny moves into Grimmauld Place too. Hermione tries not to be jealous that Ginny will be there with them, while Hermione’s off finishing her education at Hogwarts.

It’s a small comfort that Harry doesn’t show any interest in Ginny as a woman. Then again, Harry doesn’t show much interest in anything. Not since he defeated Voldemort with his own spell.

He goes drinking with Ron every Friday. And the rest of the time, when he isn’t at the Weasleys’ for dinner, or at work, he’s sitting in front of the fire at Grimmauld Place.

One day he comes into her room while she’s studying, preparing to make up her seventh year, which hasn’t started yet. Hermione was always one to try to get ahead.

“How do you do it?” he asks, flopping down on her bed, getting his scent all over her pillow, his shoes hanging off the end of the bed.

“Do what?” she asks, turning to him.

“Live,” he says, putting a hand over his face.

She gets up from her desk, and, abandoning her work, goes to lay by him on the bed. He reaches out and pulls her to him, hugging her with his chin on the top of his head. Holding her the way he did so many nights while they were on the run.

“Harry,” she sighs.

“I don’t know how to be okay anymore,” he tells her. “Is it weird that it felt more normal to be at war than it is now, when the bogeyman’s gone?”

“It wasn’t easy peasy,” she says, and feels a moment of triumph as his body shakes with laughter.

“You’ll be okay, Harry,” she says. “It’ll all be okay.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Harry has to work on September 1st. So, Ron is the one who drives her to the train, who helps her with her trunk.

And who professes his love for her just before the whistle blows.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him. “I…I just don’t know.”

Ginny stops her just inside the train door. “Ginny,” she says, surprised. “I thought you were just going to do your NEWTs at the Ministry…”

“Mum talked me out of it,” she blushes. “I don’t think she wants me and Harry to be living together just yet, even if you and Ron are there too.”

Hermione nods. She can’t think of anything else to say.

“I’m supposed to tell you that you’re going to be Head Girl,” Ginny says, handing Hermione a pin. Hermione stares at it, remembering how much she used to want that position, that honour.

“Thank you,” she says, taking it from the redhead and pinning it to her robes.

“There’s a compartment for the Heads,” Ginny says. “Good luck.” She grins as she walks away, and Hermione wonders what the girl knows that she doesn’t.

Her question is answered when she walks into the compartment, and Draco Malfoy stands to meet her.

“Granger,” he says coldly, but civilly.

“Malfoy,” she responds, and they shake hands as if they’re business associates.

“I look forward to this year,” he says. Then, he flashes a sharp smile. “It should be fun.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Minerva McGonagall pulls her aside after the Sorting Feast. She says things like, ‘inter-house unity’, ‘war recovery’, ‘united front’, ‘pardoned’, ‘I hoped you could help them accept him’, as explanation for Draco.

“It’s okay,” Hermione says. “I think we’ll work quite well together.”

If it’s partially a lie, she hopes that she’ll be able to make it a truth.

And as the year passes, she realises that she and Malfoy do work quite well together, even though he disappears every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at half-past nine to do who knows what.

She reads her letters while Malfoy’s gone. Not in the Great Hall; definitely not while he’s around. She doesn’t want anyone to see her reactions to the words inside each letter.

Ron’s letters come once a week. He complains about his training, asks about her classes, and ends every letter with ‘I love you’, or, ‘Forever yours’.

Harry’s letters come every day. At first he worries about being clingy, telling her that after seeing her every day for so long, he misses her.

She tells him not to worry. His letters are stories, more so than Ron’s, and so much more entertaining. He tells her every little detail of his work day, with funny little anecdotes about fellow Aurors, Ron, and a tortoiseshell kitten that seems to have decided that Grimmauld Place is its home.

He tells her about how he’s starting to train as an animagus. She researches in the Hogwarts library, then sends him a list of titles to buy.

Then she asks if he would mind if she became one too.

He doesn’t.

They write back and forth, stories in every letter. Hermione laughs, cries, and howls with indignance reading his letters. They come every day; she reads them every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at half-past nine.

At the end of one letter, after a month solid of writing every day, Harry ends saying, _I know you don’t read them as soon as you get them, and I don’t mind. If it gets to be too much, just let me know. I’m writing just because I need someone to say, at the end of every day, that it’ll be okay._

She responds in verse. She ends saying, ‘You’re a poet and you don’t know it’. Then she says, _It’ll be okay, Harry._

And she hopes, with all her heart, that it will be.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

One day, Draco’s attacked. He’s all right, there’s no harm done, but he won’t tell Hermione where he was when it happened. All he’ll say is, “Michael Corner’s a right git.”

He pulls out some fine, aged Firewhiskey, and together, they get very, very pissed.

“I’m soooorrryyyy,” he says while on his way to the bath. “Fo’ callin’ you mudblood.”

“S’fine.” She waves him off. “T’wasn’t yer fault.”

Michael Corner is a git who gets expelled in the middle of his seventh year for attacking another student. Hermione may have had something to do with it. What can she say? Drunk childhood bullies apologizing strikes a chord.

“He’s a Death Eater!” he bellows when he leaves. “A bloody Death Eater!”

But Hermione Granger is Draco Malfoy’s best friend. The Head Boy and Head Girl. And Harry Potter himself sends Draco updates on his mother, who Harry visits every Sunday.

 _House confinement suits her_ , Harry confides in Hermione after his first visit. _She’s starting a garden, both flowers and food. We had tea in the back garden. I never thought I’d see Narcissa Malfoy in overalls and boots and gardening gloves, sipping tea like she was the queen of England._

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hermione goes home to Grimmauld Place for Christmas. Ron picks her up from the station. She’s disappointed, but she hugs Ron anyways, hoping he won’t renew the feelings he professed to her in September.

They go straight to Grimmauld Place. Harry isn’t there, and when Hermione asks where he is, Ron just shrugs, moving closer. Hermione excuses herself, using her trunks as an excuse.

Harry doesn’t get home until late, but when he does get home, Hermione can hear him galloping up the stairs taking them two at a time. She opens the door, laughing, just before Harry bursts in, wrapping her up in a bear hug that lifts her off her feet.

“Ah, I missed you,” Harry says, inhaling.

“I missed you too,” she replies. She can’t stop smiling as Harry lets go and takes a step back, examining her from head to toe.

She observes him too. Gone is the boy Harry, who fought a monster. The Harry who was so dead inside after the war. This Harry is full of life, mature.

“You look so much better!” Hermione says.

“Thank you,” he replies, taking a bow. “Gardening is as good for me as it is for Narcissa. That’s where I was; she invited me over for tea, to introduce me to some of her friends. I didn’t realise that you were coming home today until after I told her I’d be there.” He chuckles, his eyes sparkling. “And, you know, no one cancels on Narcissa.”

“I didn’t know you were so close,” Hermione says as they move to sit, her on the bed and him straddling the desk chair.

“We weren’t, really,” he says. “I had to go by to get her to sign some paperwork for the Auror office; that’s when I first started visiting. She just seemed so lonely, keeping me as long as she could, for tea, to show me the gardens, to pick my brain for news of the outside world.”

Hermione can’t imagine being back at Malfoy Manor and not completely shutting down. “It was okay,” Harry says, looking at her seriously. “We had a very open heart to heart about it the second time I visited. She’s completely redone the room; it’s so much lighter and airier in there now. It might just be one of my favorite places in the house.”

Hermione tries to smile, but she’s remembering the smell of Bellatrix’s sweat and her own blood, and she’s shaking.

Then Harry is there. “It’s okay,” she says shakily as he hugs her to him. “It’ll be okay.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

There’s an awful moment, days before Christmas, when she remembers her parents. She hasn’t seen them since the war ended, when they, ever so politely, told her they’d rather stay in Australia after she returned their memories.

Nothing’s come in the mail from them, even though she sent them a nice Christmas card that didn’t even have moving pictures with a gift card.

There’s a moment when she thinks it was all a dream, that they’re dead. Then she calls their business, and they answer as Wendell and Monica Wilkins.

Turns out she did a better memory job than she thought, and a worse job at the cure.

She cries all day that day. Ron avoids her; he has a mind block against crying women for some reason.

Harry brings her soup, and sits with her, hugging her. “Should I call Ginny?” he asks nervously, when she gets to the point where she’s crying about how she’ll never be able to ask her mother questions about sex again, and her mother will never meet her babies.

That stops her in her tracks. “Ginny’s not here?” she asks. She’s only been here a couple days, spending most of her time in her room. She thought Ginny lived here.

“No,” Harry shakes his head. “She’s got a mystery boyfriend she’s staying with. Apparently we get to meet him at the dinner at the Weasleys’ on Christmas.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hermione is happy to see Ginny on Christmas. And she bursts into hysterical laughter when she realises Ginny’s mystery boyfriend is Draco Malfoy. Draco doesn’t think it’s that funny, and starts puffing up like a peacock. When Ginny calms him down with a hand on his arm, Hermione starts to think they might be better matched than she thought.

They all exchange gifts after dinner, squeezing into the living room. It’s a tight fit, with people sitting on the floor and in laps. Everyone’s here; Andromeda and Teddy, George and his girlfriend Angelina, Percy and his wife, Charlie, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Ginny and Draco, Ron, Harry, Hermione, Bill and Fleur, and Fleur’s little sister Gabrielle, who’s staying with Bill and Fleur for the holidays.

It’s mayhem, ripping paper and oohs and ahs over gifts. Little Teddy decides to jump up and down and throw the wrapping paper about toward the end.

Hermione has a pile of presents, but not one of them are from Harry.

After a night of excitement, Andromeda and Teddy start the rounds of goodbyes. After thanking Mrs. Weasley for having her, Hermione makes her escape to the hall heading to the kitchen fireplace.

She stops in her tracks. Harry’s under the mistletoe…with Gabrielle. Hermione’s cheeks turn red as she remembers the crush the little Veela had on Harry. She takes a deep breath as she continues down the hall, ignoring the door with the mistletoe. As she walks past, Harry pulls away from Gabrielle, putting his hands on the girl’s shoulders.

She gets to the floo, and throws a handful into the fire.

“Hermione, wait.” She hears Harry call her, but she ignores him.

“Grimmauld Place,” she says into the fire, then jumps through.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hermione races out of the fireplace at Grimmauld Place, heading for the stairs, juggling her gifts. She’s the first one back; Ron’s still with his family, and she doesn’t know where Harry is.

“Hermione!” Harry calls, and her question is answered. She pauses on the stairs, back straight, even though all her instincts are telling her to rush up the stairs and get to the safety of her room. Harry wouldn’t bother her in there.

But she waits a second too long. Harry is close enough to grab her arm, and turn her to him. She faces him, a step above.

“It’s okay, Harry,” she says softly. “I understand. You don’t need to explain yourself to me.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Harry says in a rush, still holding her arm. “It wasn’t normal mistletoe…George put a spell or something under it, if you go under it, you get stuck, and the next person past has to kiss you to get out.”

“Oh,” Hermione says.

“Gabrielle was just the next person to pass,” he says. “I was – “ he clears his throat, embarrassed. “I was trying to catch you.”

“Oh,” Hermione says, quieter, looking into the green eyes of her best friend.

“Here,” he says, holding out a red wrapped package. “Open it.”

She opens it, and inside are earrings and a necklace, bold gold and red lions. “Oh,” she breathes. “They’re beautiful.”

“You’re welcome,” Harry says quietly, softly. He places a fingertip on her chin, lifting it to look at him. He leans in, and kisses her.

And it’s everything she ever dreamed, everything she ever imagined.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hermione thinks of that kiss, their first kiss, as she stands in front of her groom at the altar.

“I do,” she says.

She thinks of the day Harry proposed. She was being miserable after one of her bills she proposed to the Minister failed to pass. He took her out for a picnic in a picturesque muggle park, and tried to distract her from her failure. When all else failed, he asked her to marry him.

She stopped thinking about the bill after that.

“I do,” he says, looking at his bride with brilliant green eyes.

“You may kiss the bride.”

And this kiss, the one that binds them, is every bit as perfect as their first.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Later, they’re swaying on the dance floor. Looking around her, Hermione sighs.

“You okay?” Harry asks. “Regret it yet?” He grins at her.

“Not one tiny bit,” she replies.

“Then we’re okay,” Harry says.

“More than okay,” she corrects. “We’re close to perfect.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


End file.
